Building Projects Together in MakeCode Arcade

Gone are the days where people think of coders working alone in a dark basement. These days, professional programmers work together daily side-by-side (or virtually, when public safety requires it.)

For that reason, it’s even more important to let students work together as they’re learning to make their first projects. The process of coding as a group might not be obvious, but this blog will show you some tips and tricks for coding with friends using MakeCode Arcade.

Pair Programming

Pair programming is a popular idea in coding. Not only does it allow multiple people to share one device, but it also allows learners to bounce ideas off of a friend until they come up with something amazing.

Usually, pair programming happens with one person writing the code on the computer (“driving”) while the other person acts as the big-picture thinker (“navigator”), coming up with solutions and thinking ahead to the next problem.

Sharing Code

While MakeCode doesn’t yet have the ability to let multiple people work on the same project on different computers, it does allow people to copy code from their own computer to share with teammates who can paste it into the main game.

Sharing code is simple once users become familiar with switching into text mode.

By clicking on the “JavaScript” (or “Python”) tab, users enter the text editor where they can copy and paste code into a shared document for teammates to grab. The driver can take the copied code and paste it back into the main project, then swap back to blocks to continue coding.

Sharing images and tilemaps is even easier. Code copied from a shared doc can be pasted right into the image or tilemap editors!

Share A Full Project

And, of course, anyone in a group can share an entire project using the share link in the header bar.

Opening the shared URL will give you the option to edit and remix whatever code was sent.

Watch the Video

For more information on building a project together in MakeCode Arcade, you can download this easy reference page, or watch the video below!